


This Must Be the Place

by busaikko



Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, F/F, Multi, Shaving, Threesome, Threesome - F/F/M, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, Transgender, Transsexual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-30
Updated: 2011-09-30
Packaged: 2017-10-24 04:45:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/259148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/busaikko/pseuds/busaikko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John's home from Pegasus after being captured.  Cam and Vala offer care.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Must Be the Place

**Author's Note:**

> beta by Carolyn Claire, who cracked the whip and kicked my ass in the best ways.

"Cam darling," Vala calls up the stairs. "Look who's home."

"Be there in a minute," Cam shouts back. He's in the upstairs bathroom, getting everything ready, and hears the front screen door slam and grins to himself. Vala's not a big fan of patience or reticence, and he figures John deserves the hugging and fussing, and won't spook if Vala's the one doing it..

Last year had been good: Atlantis was still on Earth, SG1 got easy missions, and this thing between the three of them had the time to become something comfortable and real. But now Earth is staring down war with the Lucian Alliance, and John wouldn't even be back from Pegasus if not for being captured and missing for two long months, finally found and ordered back to Earth to recuperate.

The door bangs again, and Cam wipes his hands on his shirt, takes a deep breath, and jogs down the stairs.

John's pale and tense, even with Vala's arms encircling, but Cam gets a brilliant smile when John sees him. Cam goes right over and kisses John, hands cupping rough hollowed cheeks, pushing his fears and doubts back down to the dark place.

"Hey," Cam says, and he can't stop from smiling wide, even though he's sure he looks goofy.

John quirks an eyebrow up. "Hi, honey, I'm home."

Cam wants to say _at last_ or _thank God_ or something unforgivably melodramatic about never leaving them again, but Vala gives him a look that tells him to suck it up. "You sure are," Cam says, and ruffles John's hair. "Go on upstairs. We've got the place ready for you."

John nods and steps neatly out of Cam and Vala's embraces. "My suitcase's in the car. You mind getting it?"

Cam doesn't know if this is because John's too wrung out and beat up to manage the suitcase and the stairs, or if John just wants Cam out of the way. Whatever, Cam thinks, and says _Sure_ , taking the keys like it's no problem. Which it isn't.

Vala's fussing with clothes and John's already in the shower when Cam shows up.

"What?" he mouths at Vala, emphasizing the question with his eyebrows and hands.

Vala points at the desk chair and mimes unpacking, and doesn't say anything until Cam drops the bag down and unzips it. Typical for John, there's a trilogy of fat hardback novels, a scant handful of clothes, and a plastic baggie holding a toothbrush. Cam sticks the books on the desk. John's using up all the hot water; if the windows weren't all open the steam would turn the whole upstairs into a sauna. It kind of makes Cam's heart ache.

"Could be worse," Vala says brightly, but she's very obviously not looking at Cam. While John was missing Vala'd pretended that everything would work out fine, and Cam hadn't had the heart to ask her what they would do if John was dead – lying to each other, each for the other's good. Now they don't need to lie, but old habits and all that.

"We could get one of those big rolls of bubble wrap," Cam suggests. "That'd keep John out of trouble."

"I've had people killed for less," Vala says. Cam hopes she's talking about John's captors and not him. He goes over and wraps her up in his arms, swaying a little like they're slow dancing. "You were just as scared as I was," she tells him after a long, warm, peaceful moment, and then goes up on her toes to whisper in his ear, "and I think John suspects."

"Love's weird like that," Cam says. Vala wipes her face on his shirt and slips out of his arms. "Hey, I'm talking to you."

Vala pulls one of the dresses out of the closet decisively, hands it to Cam, and collects underclothes from the dresser. "Yes, but I'm not listening to you, darling." She gives him a sweet smile, and then swats him on the ass as she walks past him to knock on the open bathroom door. "You're going to turn into a plum," she calls to John, stuffing the clothes in the towel rack.

John turns off the water after a moment, and sticks a hand out for the towel. Vala hands it over and hops up onto the counter next to the sink.

"Prune," John says, finally stepping out of the shower, neatly wrapped in towel from armpits to mid-thigh. "They're the wrinkly ones."

"I thought they were the constipation ones," Vala says, wide-eyed and mischievous. She reaches out with her foot and snags the wooden stool, dragging it over between her legs, so when John sits she can comb her fingers through damp hair.

Cam whips up the shaving cream, watching them, and then picks up the razor. He's never used anything but his granddad's straight razor on John's face, since back when they first started sleeping together and John let Vala explain that John was her _girlfriend_ and not her boyfriend. _Though we've been in the market for one,_ Vala had said, patting Cam's naked stomach, _and John says you're a real fixer-upper._ Cam's always had a thing for shaving, the ritual of danger and the art of control, and it was about the only thing he could give to John that John would accept.

Cam's had his razor honed since he heard John was coming home, and stropped it just a couple hours ago. He respects the razor as a tool, and the sentiment of using it, and John, and imagines his grandfather telling him how to hold his hand steady and true, how to take care of the people he loves.

Cam works with slow careful patience, each stroke of the blade coming away with stubble-speckled soap. With the shadow gone John transforms back into the person who belongs here, in this house, belongs with Cam and Vala. Cam works along John's jawline, following the curve of the bone, and talks a little about what John missed – he had to move all the tulip bulbs, he tells John, smoothing more shaving cream on, because Vala wanted to put in hydrangeas on the side of the house, and hadn't that been a weekend of dirt and backaches.

"Looks pretty, though," John says, careful of the razor against his throat, even though Cam's never cut him yet.

The look Vala gives Cam over John's head is undiluted smug _I told you so_. "You should have seen Cam in his work clothes," Vala says. "He looks _delicious_ in mud, especially when he's angry."

"Did you take pictures?" John asks, eyes falling shut for a moment, lips nearly in a smile.

Vala curls her fingers and runs them along John's neck, smooth and clean now, before leaning forward and saying, "Have you heard of the YouTube?"

Cam sets the razor down so he can make a threatening gesture at her, but she just laughs at him.

Cam turns John's head with the light pressure of his fingers, making sure he hasn't missed a spot, then wipes John's face and neck clean with a cool damp towel and hands Vala the bottle of skin-refresher stuff. The bottle's purple and Cam thinks the stuff smells like dryer sheets and baby powder, but it's a clean, soft, girly smell and Cam knows that one of the terrible things about prisons is the seeping, clinging stench of nasty pit toilets, sweat, rancid food, dirt. Blood. Cam hates prisons that smell like old blood. Or new blood.

"Hey," John says, and pokes at Cam with a finger, while Vala does her experimental face-massage technique. She swears it takes years off, but Cam's not convinced. "You're a million miles away."

"Just thinking," Cam says.

"It's hard for him," Vala murmurs, as if for John's ears only. "He's a man of action."

"Oh, yeah," Cam says, and takes John's hand in his own. He brushes shaving cream quick down from elbow to knuckles. Arm hair's always a weird thing to shave; it's soft and vulnerable and goes fast. Cam enjoys the long strokes; not so much the careful passes of the razor over John's too-thin wrist.

He can't get his head back to the place where he can talk about things that aren't important, so he doesn't say anything, just listens to Vala relaying increasingly wild lies disguised as gossip, and John scoffing. Cam does the back of John's hand last, conscious of how much damage a slip could cause, and then wipes John clean and changes arms. When he's done he kneels down on the bathmat and rubs his hand thoughtfully along John's calf.

"Ooh," Vala says, eyebrows going up in approval. "On your knees is one of your better looks."

Cam makes it obvious that he's ignoring her. "I should do your legs, too."

John frowns. "I don't feel much like dressing up."

"Yeah, well, Vala's got dresses and things for you." Cam gave a shrug. "You wouldn't want to hurt her feelings." Maybe someday the thought of Vala shopping for John won't hurt, but he still remembers thinking that she was trying to hold death at bay with her credit cards. "Plus we got a new game system, and you know you're the only one around here who can hook up all the cables and crap. Nothing sexier than a pretty girl in a pretty dress with a toolbox."

He wants John to laugh, but instead John's bottom lip gets bit down on hard, like John needs the pain as a distraction. "Look at me," John says, voice low and bitter, and Cam is, he's looking at that pretty mouth hoping not to see blood. "I've gone gray, there's new lines on my face, I can't run a mile without getting winded."

"Your hair could be blue and I wouldn't give a damn," Cam says. Vala leans forward, wrapping John close in her arms. "You came home." The words are too small for all that Cam feels, but he can't explain it better without being overwhelmed by a history of love and terror.

John swallows and then nods, not empathetic but not, Cam thinks – hopes – doubtful. "Okay."

Cam gets out the safety razors and whips up more shaving cream. He holds John's foot and works carefully down from the knobby, difficult knee, wiping hair and soap off on a rag after each pass. There's a certain way John's legs curve differently from Vala's, muscle in different places, and Cam has to be careful not to let his hands fall into habit. He goes slow, reclaiming smooth skin inch by inch. He avoids the raw skinned places where he thinks John might have been manacled, tries not to even touch there, or press any of the fading bruises, either.

"That's good enough," John says when Cam puts a hand just under the edge of the towel. "Not like I'll be wearing swimwear."

"Just us three in the hot tub," Cam agrees, and tries to do that thing with his eyebrows as Vala chimes in with, "Clothing optional." He gets the washcloth again and rinses John clean, even down to the shaving cream that somehow always gets between John's toes, and then sets John's feet on the floor. "There."

"Great," John says, and puts a hand on Cam's shoulder to stand; not so much out of weakness as for an excuse to touch. John tends to needs both, the excuses and the touching.

Vala's more of one to just take what she wants, so she just pushes the both of them out of the bathroom and over to the bed, John laughing protests about not even being dressed yet, and Cam a little dizzy with sudden joy.

Vala puts both hands on John's smooth cheeks and kisses, deep and reverent. She sprawls slowly backwards onto the bed, still kissing, sliding her hands into John's hair, running her thumbs over the clean-shaven skin at the corners of John's mouth. It's incredibly hot. Cam's been half turned on ever since he opened his razor, and watching John and Vala petting each other really isn't calming him down much. He makes himself go into the bathroom and clean everything up, tossing the rags and the disposables, cleaning his grandfather's straight razor, rinsing out the shaving cup and the brush. He goes slow enough to get everything right the first time, and only then returns to the bedroom.

The new dress Vala bought John is hanging off the bathroom door hook, the skirt dancing in the cross-breeze. It's going to be there a while, Cam figures, seeing as how it's now apparently the opposite of being-clothed time. The room's sunbright and Vala's laughing and topless, sitting on John's stomach. The towel's a lost cause, untucked and ruched up, and John's smooth legs shift on the sheets like the softness and warmth is an unbearable stimulation. There's silver in Vala's hair where it's lifted by the wind, and John's hand is cupped between her legs.

"You girls got room for me in there?" Cam asks.

"Don't be ridiculous," Vala says, and at the same time John says, in a tone that suggests Cam's being stupid, "What do you think?"

"I think there needs to be more kissing," Cam says, and drops onto the bed to watch as Vala bends down and John arches up, tongues meeting before lips. Vala touches John's face, palm gliding from cheek to jaw, curling around John's throat light, like a blade, like holding John's life in her hand, and Cam shudders, shaken hard by the mystery of love.


End file.
